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A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

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Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#241

Post by diogenescynic »

hansonkd wrote: post #31

This might sound stupid but I refuse to go to dentists that have "too nice" of an office. Over the years I have lived in several places and had a variety of dentists and one common theme that sticks with me, the nicer and higher tech the office is, the more procedures they are going to recommend you. They need to pay for the equipment and office somehow. I've had one dentist say I need 3 cavities filled. That I neede…

In college, I went to a dentist in Santa Barbara exactly as you describe--he even offered sugary beverages from a fridge when you left the office. I remember on my first cleaning he said I had 6 cavities! Up until that point, I'd only been to my local dentist and I'd never had any cavities. I ended up getting a second opinion from another dentist and he didn't think think I had any cavities. And here I am 20+ years later and I've still never had a cavity... I've had similar experiences with veterinarians...

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#242

Post by tivert »

hansonkd wrote: post #31

This might sound stupid but I refuse to go to dentists that have "too nice" of an office. Over the years I have lived in several places and had a variety of dentists and one common theme that sticks with me, the nicer and higher tech the office is, the more procedures they are going to recommend you. They need to pay for the equipment and office somehow. I've had one dentist say I need 3 cavities filled. That I neede…

> This might sound stupid but I refuse to go to dentists that have "too nice" of an office.

That is a very good heuristic, and I've come to the same conclusion.

> Over the years I have lived in several places and had a variety of dentists and one common theme that sticks with me, the nicer and higher tech the office is, the more procedures they are going to recommend you. They need to pay for the equipment and office somehow.

This is exactly my experience. When I first moved to a new city, I booked an appointment with a new dentist that had an office right next to my apartment building. My previous dentists since I was a kid were trustworthy, so I was kind of naive and trusting.

Their office was new, overlooking a large pond/small lake. Very nice.

After the first visit, the dentist said I needed 4 new fillings, three because his diagnodent (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4282000/) went beep on those teeth (one was legitimate and IIRC I spotted it in the xray myself). He also said I should replace my existing amalgam filling because it was "wearing out." Because I was naive, I got the five fillings over two appointments. Then every visit after that, they tried to sell me on Invisalign.

Eventually I got sick of the place (some obnoxious hygienist was the last straw), went to a new dentist, told him about my last one, and he said you should never diagnose a cavity based on just a single diagnodent reading. If you use it at all, you need to track increasing decay readings. He doesn't use one. I've been going to that office for 10 years, and haven't once had a filling. They're watching a few areas, but that's it.

That dentist still has a CRT TV in the waiting room (and had a Nintendo 64 with another CRT in a forgotten corner until COVID).

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#243

Post by diogenescynic »

burningChrome wrote: post #194
rootusrootus wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is some merit to that idea. It is not perfect, but it is a potential red flag. I experienced something similar a couple weeks ago when I went to a local dermatologist for a skin cancer screening. The office was gorgeous. Top of the line everything, spacious, just incredible. When the doctor came in, he was a whirlwind - he glanced at my back, the fronts of my arms, and my face ... then pronounced me in…

>> He billed my insurance just under $300 for an exam that took under 5 minutes. This is really common in health care. I injured my shoulder during hockey and went to the ER. The ER nurse told me to go to a specialty clinic that had offices all over town. Told me to bring a book since they do walk ins and it will be a while before I was seen. Brought a book and checked in. Three hours later, they took me back. I wait…

>This is really common in health care.

I want to clarify it's only common is US healthcare. We're rally the only country in the world paying exorbitant prices AND getting low quality care. For instance, I once hit my head on a train while in France and had to get stitches. I was rushed to the emergency room in an ambulance, 2 nurses and a doctor immediately started helping clean the wound and stitching it up. I was in and out in 15-20 minutes, they gave me antibiotics, and they only charged me 50 EUR (which would have been free if I was a French citizen). I've had several similar experiences in the US that all took hours and hours in an ER and I was billed thousands.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#244

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

aanet wrote: post #209

A serious question: Do Dentists not have to swear by the Hippocratic Oath?? Not that swearing by the Oath implies that all dentists, by association, will indeed be honest... Or the opposite, tbh. Just curious. I always found it (still find it) rather curious that the United States, despite being such an advanced nation / economy with pockets of excellence in medicine care, still has such crumbling, disparate and high…

How does an oath matter, really? Any oath is a sham show of allegiance/sincerity to some cause.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#245

Post by mankyd »

MBCook wrote: post #113
mankyd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some history here, at least in the US. As I recall, when "modern medicine" was first forming, there was a push to make it part of what we would consider standard medical care, but another, more influential party decided (incorrectly) that teeth weren't living tissue and should be excluded. The divide took hold and we ended up with the system we have today, where teeth are independent of the rest of the medic…

You’re right, there’s a history. The reason I remember (I don’t know which of us or both are right) is that modern doctors came out of the “medical”/healing specialty where as dentists came out of the barber/surgeon tradition. So I believe doctors didn’t want to admit their inferiors (barbers who pull teeth) to the profession and so that’s why dentists were kept out. Overtime they’ve both grown in parallel since they…

I did a bit more digging and think I might have gotten the story a tiny bit muddled, but maybe not?

Most the articles I find talk about the barber vs doctor distinction, but they also all bring up a story about a proposal to add dentistry to the University of Maryland's medical school.

Evidently this proposal was put before the state legislature, was rejected, and thus was born the Baltimore College of Dentistry. From their own website:

> With the founding of the college, dentistry became a profession separate from medicine. Dentistry could have become a medical specialty if the Maryland legislature had approved a request to incorporate it as a department at the University of Maryland’s medical school, but the request was rejected owing to cost. Dentistry then set its own course.

https://www.mchoralhealth.org/milestones/1840.html

From what I can see, people seem to point to this story as a historical waypoint for the division of the two in the US.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#246

Post by CamperBob2 »

gruez wrote: post #180
dopylitty wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There might be one case somewhere that could be found where a firm that technically counts as PE isn't shady but in general the very idea of private equity is shady so it follows that all the PE firms would be shady also. The point of PE isn't to run sustainable businesses that provide quality products and services for customers while treating their employees well. The point is to rapidly suck all the value out of bu…

>The point of PE isn't to run sustainable businesses that provide quality products and services for customers while treating their employees well. The point is to rapidly suck all the value out of businesses by loading them up with debt, breaking laws, mistreating customers, and exploiting employees. What happens to the carcass of the business or to the customers and employees whose lives have been destroyed doesn't…

The implication, which is well understood, is that the "equity" in "private equity" exists in the form of investments in other companies by the PE business. No reasonable person would agree that ownership of one's own business counts as "private equity."

So SpaceX doesn't count at all. SoftBank, being a VC-like business aimed at speculation on new businesses rather than sacking and looting existing ones, is debatable.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#247

Post by tivert »

sameoldtune wrote: post #50
hansonkd wrote: post #31

This might sound stupid but I refuse to go to dentists that have "too nice" of an office. Over the years I have lived in several places and had a variety of dentists and one common theme that sticks with me, the nicer and higher tech the office is, the more procedures they are going to recommend you. They need to pay for the equipment and office somehow. I've had one dentist say I need 3 cavities filled. That I neede…

When I started working at Amazon in 2014 I had a number of coworkers from India and Taiwan whose dentists had convinced them that they needed professional teeth cleanings every 3 months. I didn’t say anything as I am not a dental expert, but it felt like my coworkers were being taken advantage of. Like you I had an experience as a child with a dentist who my parents later found out was full of B.S.

> When I started working at Amazon in 2014 I had a number of coworkers from India and Taiwan whose dentists had convinced them that they needed professional teeth cleanings every 3 months.

I have a friend from China whose dentist convinced him to do that. On the other hand, he'd never been to a dentist in his life until he came to the US, and there was something about deep gum pockets.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#248

Post by bityard »

hansonkd wrote: post #31

This might sound stupid but I refuse to go to dentists that have "too nice" of an office. Over the years I have lived in several places and had a variety of dentists and one common theme that sticks with me, the nicer and higher tech the office is, the more procedures they are going to recommend you. They need to pay for the equipment and office somehow. I've had one dentist say I need 3 cavities filled. That I neede…

Ha, similar experience here. I had a tooth issue right in the middle of covid lockdown that required an emergency root canal and a temporary crown. After I got that done, I had to have a permanent crown installed by a regular dentist and asked for a referral. The place I got referred to was okay, I guess, although I ended up having to pay several thousand out of pocket even with insurance.

I went there 3 months later for a cleaning and checkup and they told me I have SEVEN cavities and by the way, we have an opening next week, it should only take a few hours. I was skeptical: I took fairly good care of my teeth and hadn't been eating sugar in any form for several years at that point. My previous dentist closed up shop around that time but was always impressed with how clean I kept my teeth. (He knew about the potential for the root canal on the one tooth, but we had agreed to put it off until it became a problem.) I hadn't had a cavity and ages and when I did, it was one or two every few years, not SEVEN all at once. I said I would get back to them about the appointment and got a second opinion.

The other dentist said I had zero cavities. Good lord.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#249

Post by cinntaile »

diogenescynic wrote: post #243
burningChrome wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He billed my insurance just under $300 for an exam that took under 5 minutes. This is really common in health care. I injured my shoulder during hockey and went to the ER. The ER nurse told me to go to a specialty clinic that had offices all over town. Told me to bring a book since they do walk ins and it will be a while before I was seen. Brought a book and checked in. Three hours later, they took me back. I wait…

>This is really common in health care. I want to clarify it's only common is US healthcare. We're rally the only country in the world paying exorbitant prices AND getting low quality care. For instance, I once hit my head on a train while in France and had to get stitches. I was rushed to the emergency room in an ambulance, 2 nurses and a doctor immediately started helping clean the wound and stitching it up. I was i…

I don't get why they gave you antibiotics though?

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#250

Post by owenversteeg »

loocsinus wrote: post #97

I am a dentist. The article and some of the comments here make me sad. sorry for the bad apples in my profession. I am sure most of the dentists are honest. If you have questions about procedures you don't understand, you can ask me.

I hate to say it, but I do not believe that most dentists are honest. Have you heard of the Readers Digest dentist investigation? In any other field it would have been a come-to-Jesus moment, prompting total reform, but the industry escaped with a mountain of PR and no change. That was nearly thirty years ago. Since then, median gross dentists' billings have increased significantly. Support for evidence-based, low-intervention dentistry is practically nonexistent in the US.
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